Trump names former national intelligence director John Ratcliffe as pick for CIA director

Donald Trump will nominate John Ratcliffe, who previously served as director of national intelligence in the first Trump administration, to be the next director of the CIA, the president-elect announced on Tuesday.

“From exposing fake Russian collusion to be a Clinton campaign operation, to catching the FBl’s abuse of Civil Liberties at the FISA Court, John Ratcliffe has always been a warrior for Truth and Honesty with the American Public,” Trump wrote in a statement on Truth Social on Tuesday. “When 51 intelligence officials were lying about Hunter Biden’s laptop, there was one, John Ratcliffe, telling the truth to the American People.”

Prior to serving in the Trump administration, Ratcliffe was a Republican congressman for Texas, serving on the House intelligence, judiciary, and homeland security committees.

Ratcliffe currently is the co-chair of the Center for American Security at the America First Policy Institute, a Trump-aligned think tank.

The intelligence official has long been a vocal ally of Donald Trump.

In the House, Ratcliffe helped pursue investigations of Hunter Biden and was one of a number of Republicans who raised concerns about the federal government using the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court to spy on those linked to the Trump campaign.

He also defended Trump during the impeachment hearings and tore into former special counsel Robert Mueller, who led the Russia probe.

The Senate narrowly confirmed Ratcliffe in May of 2020 as director of national intelligence, as Republicans pursued investigations of the 2016 Russia probes using newly declassified information. Ratcliffe was unsuccessfully nominated in 2019, amid concerns he exaggerated his résumé.

During the first Trump administration, Ratcliffe was accused of politicizing intelligence work for declassifying information related to the 2016 Russia investigations into Trump in the final stages of the 2020 election, including unverified Russian intelligence alleging damaging information about Democrats.

Following Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss, Ratcliffe refused into December of that year to acknowledge the incoming Biden administration, though he reportedly briefed officials at the Justice Department that month that intelligence agencies had “no indications that any foreign actors attempted to alter any technical aspect of the voting process in the 2020 U.S. elections, including voter registration, casting ballots, vote tabulation, or reporting results.”

Ratcliffe suggested after leaving the White House that the U.S. possessed further information about unidentified flying objects that could be declassified.

As CIA director, Ratcliffe could play a significant role in negotiations surrounding the Israel-Hamas where, where current director Bill Burns has heavily been involved, as well as other intelligence priorities like countering Chinese influence.